The Wall Street Journal offered an article yesterday on How to Fight pirates. It reported how, in the late 18th century and early 19th Century, Moroccan pirates-- Barbary pirates-- were attacking American ships and kidnapping their crews, holding the crews and the goods on board for ransom. In 1785, the Pasha of Morocco demanded a million bucks, ten percent of the fledgling USA's national budget, for protection. Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson had no alternative. For at least a decade, for lack of a navy and support from other nations to fight back, the US paid those ransoms.

The Wall street journal article goes on to talk about the current Somalian pirate affliction off the coast of Somalia.

But what about the pirates in the USA? I'm talking about the finance company and hedge fund execs who have hijacked our economy and run off with billions in booty, at the cost of tens of millions of citizens' homes and life savings.

These criminals are destroying lives at a much larger scale. And the American people have no champion to rescue them. Bush appointed Hank Paulson, the equivalent of Blackbeard, to suggest the "bailout" which looks more and more like a massive keelhauling of the economy. And Obama has appointed another fellow pirate-- Geithner-- to take the treasury and swing the citizenry by the yardarm.

The fact is, the financial system throughout the world has been taken over by pirates-- rip-off artists who have invented new ways to finagle billions out of the hands of the people and into the hands of the few.